In the middle of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's press conference, two-and-a-half-year-old Elizabeth began to get fidgety.
She had been quiet and patient on the lap of her mother Marie-Ève Rivard for nearly half an hour while Harper announced some new tax breaks for families who are caring for relatives with a disability.
Elizabeth suffers from mitral valve stenosis. A valve in her heart doesn't work the way it is supposed to and that has affected her ability to swallow food. As a result, she requires to be fed by tube four times a day.
She and her family – mom Marie-Ève and dad Daniel Gagnon plus grandparents — were seated to Harper's right during the press conference.
And when Elizabeth became a bit noisy in the midst of it, a member of the prime minister's staff was quick to jump in and provide Elizabeth with one of his most cherished toys — his BlackBerry.
Dimitri Soudas, the prime minister's press secretary, was co-ordinating the media question-and-answer question from a microphone beside Elizabeth. Elizabeth had become fascinated by the shiny BlackBerry 8800, (left)a handheld device that lets users received and send e-mail and make phone calls. BlackBerrys are indispensable tools among political staff and journalists in Ottawa. Soudas, in fact, carries three BlackBerrys with him.
But he was happy to give one of them to Elizabeth who seemed fascinated as she turned it over in her hands and played with the keyboard on the front.
“I actually made sure to lock it so she wouldn't be able to call all my contacts by pressing all the buttons,” said Soudas.
My 3 year old nephew was the one who taught me to keep a button pressed for a second or two in order to capitilize a letter…